lighthouse99
New member
Justice or Revenge? “VENGEANCE is MINE, saith the Lord”
We hear on TV about a heinous murder, and our first and most gut level reaction is: “Death penalty!”
Or a friend betrays us—by--say... disagreeing with us as to who should be president, and—same thing: Death penalty!
:shocked:
Ok, so that one’s not such a good example (for most of us, hopefully… presumably?
)
Christians (not the fake ones, but the ones who take seriously what Jesus says), in these kinds of situations will stop themselves, and say “OK, vengeance is Yours, Lord, not mine,” [Romans 12:19, Deuteronomy 32:35] and/or “Jesus, you said to turn the other cheek,” [Mt 5:39] and/or some other apropos scripture.
The problem is there seem to be so few of these kind of non-revenge-taking people in the world. Is it 5 out of 100? 10 out of 100? If we don’t have any more than that (!), or if the number of such persons doesn’t increase substantially in the next few years or so, we can kiss civilization as we know it goodbye (which, of course, many of us already have…) .
:think:
We hear on TV about a heinous murder, and our first and most gut level reaction is: “Death penalty!”
Or a friend betrays us—by--say... disagreeing with us as to who should be president, and—same thing: Death penalty!
:shocked:
Ok, so that one’s not such a good example (for most of us, hopefully… presumably?
) Christians (not the fake ones, but the ones who take seriously what Jesus says), in these kinds of situations will stop themselves, and say “OK, vengeance is Yours, Lord, not mine,” [Romans 12:19, Deuteronomy 32:35] and/or “Jesus, you said to turn the other cheek,” [Mt 5:39] and/or some other apropos scripture.
The problem is there seem to be so few of these kind of non-revenge-taking people in the world. Is it 5 out of 100? 10 out of 100? If we don’t have any more than that (!),
or if the number of such persons doesn’t increase substantially in the next few years or so, we can kiss civilization as we know it goodbye (which, of course, many of us already have…) . :think:
